Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the start of the school year and I'm overjoyed at sending my kids to their neighborhood school after a terrible pandemic year and a half. If you are considering putting your kids into EL Haynes Elementary I would tell you not to do it. The school really dropped the ball during the pandemic and has an ineffectual parent association that is essentially a public relations tool for the school. Parents have zero input and were left powerless during the pandemic. Parent teacher conferences disappeared. Teachers bailed. It was a disaster. During the early days of the pandemic, during school hours, I found my kid's teacher at the grocery store buying wine.

If you are looking for a school with a strong sense of community, I would not send my child to Haynes.

I wish more schools were judged not just on teacher abilities (very important) but also how involved are the parents, and how well the school encourages and promotes accountability. So many charter schools have zero accountability.

Not sure why you are throwing the entire Charter Sector in on this. It's not really about accountability--as if DCPS central office had enough accountability to keep things going last year in most schools. Seems to me it's more about EL Haynes in particular..

The DC Charter Board actually has very stringent oversite and accountability metrics. I've been impressed. You can look up each and every charter schools and the details of their oversight, reopening plans etc, yearly evaluations, etc. here:

https://dcpcsb.org/school-profiles

A more direct link is https://osse.dc.gov/page/2021-22-lea-continuous-education-plans

These are worthless. Check out the SSMA thread for what a charter is doing in practice. Without the Mayor saying no, charters will do whatever they want... and that means closures, closures, closures. If SSMA parents don't stamp this out now, they will have no school all year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the start of the school year and I'm overjoyed at sending my kids to their neighborhood school after a terrible pandemic year and a half. If you are considering putting your kids into EL Haynes Elementary I would tell you not to do it. The school really dropped the ball during the pandemic and has an ineffectual parent association that is essentially a public relations tool for the school. Parents have zero input and were left powerless during the pandemic. Parent teacher conferences disappeared. Teachers bailed. It was a disaster. During the early days of the pandemic, during school hours, I found my kid's teacher at the grocery store buying wine.

If you are looking for a school with a strong sense of community, I would not send my child to Haynes.

I wish more schools were judged not just on teacher abilities (very important) but also how involved are the parents, and how well the school encourages and promotes accountability. So many charter schools have zero accountability.

Not sure why you are throwing the entire Charter Sector in on this. It's not really about accountability--as if DCPS central office had enough accountability to keep things going last year in most schools. Seems to me it's more about EL Haynes in particular..

The DC Charter Board actually has very stringent oversite and accountability metrics. I've been impressed. You can look up each and every charter schools and the details of their oversight, reopening plans etc, yearly evaluations, etc. here:

https://dcpcsb.org/school-profiles

A more direct link is https://osse.dc.gov/page/2021-22-lea-continuous-education-plans

These are worthless. Check out the SSMA thread for what a charter is doing in practice. Without the Mayor saying no, charters will do whatever they want... and that means closures, closures, closures. If SSMA parents don't stamp this out now, they will have no school all year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the start of the school year and I'm overjoyed at sending my kids to their neighborhood school after a terrible pandemic year and a half. If you are considering putting your kids into EL Haynes Elementary I would tell you not to do it. The school really dropped the ball during the pandemic and has an ineffectual parent association that is essentially a public relations tool for the school. Parents have zero input and were left powerless during the pandemic. Parent teacher conferences disappeared. Teachers bailed. It was a disaster. During the early days of the pandemic, during school hours, I found my kid's teacher at the grocery store buying wine.

If you are looking for a school with a strong sense of community, I would not send my child to Haynes.

I wish more schools were judged not just on teacher abilities (very important) but also how involved are the parents, and how well the school encourages and promotes accountability. So many charter schools have zero accountability.

Not sure why you are throwing the entire Charter Sector in on this. It's not really about accountability--as if DCPS central office had enough accountability to keep things going last year in most schools. Seems to me it's more about EL Haynes in particular..

The DC Charter Board actually has very stringent oversite and accountability metrics. I've been impressed. You can look up each and every charter schools and the details of their oversight, reopening plans etc, yearly evaluations, etc. here:

https://dcpcsb.org/school-profiles

A more direct link is https://osse.dc.gov/page/2021-22-lea-continuous-education-plans

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the start of the school year and I'm overjoyed at sending my kids to their neighborhood school after a terrible pandemic year and a half. If you are considering putting your kids into EL Haynes Elementary I would tell you not to do it. The school really dropped the ball during the pandemic and has an ineffectual parent association that is essentially a public relations tool for the school. Parents have zero input and were left powerless during the pandemic. Parent teacher conferences disappeared. Teachers bailed. It was a disaster. During the early days of the pandemic, during school hours, I found my kid's teacher at the grocery store buying wine.

If you are looking for a school with a strong sense of community, I would not send my child to Haynes.

I wish more schools were judged not just on teacher abilities (very important) but also how involved are the parents, and how well the school encourages and promotes accountability. So many charter schools have zero accountability.

Not sure why you are throwing the entire Charter Sector in on this. It's not really about accountability--as if DCPS central office had enough accountability to keep things going last year in most schools. Seems to me it's more about EL Haynes in particular..

The DC Charter Board actually has very stringent oversite and accountability metrics. I've been impressed. You can look up each and every charter schools and the details of their oversight, reopening plans etc, yearly evaluations, etc. here:

https://dcpcsb.org/school-profiles

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the start of the school year and I'm overjoyed at sending my kids to their neighborhood school after a terrible pandemic year and a half. If you are considering putting your kids into EL Haynes Elementary I would tell you not to do it. The school really dropped the ball during the pandemic and has an ineffectual parent association that is essentially a public relations tool for the school. Parents have zero input and were left powerless during the pandemic. Parent teacher conferences disappeared. Teachers bailed. It was a disaster. During the early days of the pandemic, during school hours, I found my kid's teacher at the grocery store buying wine.

If you are looking for a school with a strong sense of community, I would not send my child to Haynes.

I wish more schools were judged not just on teacher abilities (very important) but also how involved are the parents, and how well the school encourages and promotes accountability. So many charter schools have zero accountability.

Not sure why you are throwing the entire Charter Sector in on this. It's not really about accountability--as if DCPS central office had enough accountability to keep things going last year in most schools. Seems to me it's more about EL Haynes in particular..

The DC Charter Board actually has very stringent oversite and accountability metrics. I've been impressed. You can look up each and every charter schools and the details of their oversight, reopening plans etc, yearly evaluations, etc. here:

https://dcpcsb.org/school-profiles

I’m not a fan of Central Office by any means (I’m a DCPS parent in Ward 4), and DCPS did a mediocre job opening schools last year, but many charters barely opened or didn’t open at all. Parents had zero recourse to pressure their schools to provide more opportunities for IPL. To be quite honest, most charters don’t serve their student populations any better or worse than DCPS schools, except of course for the ones deemed acceptable by UMC parents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a UMC charter parent, I'm starting to feel like our charter does NOT listen to UMC parents AT ALL but instead focuses on the majority of the student population...which is NOT UMC. I don't approve of the mitigation strategies our charter rolled out but I'm apparently in a minority, and viewed as the privileged white parent who finds fault with everything and anything.

Majority of parents seem just fine that kids are back and in-person. Parents aren't raising any concerns over the fact that lunch is inside or that desks are touching with no distancing whatsoever.

I'm currently trying to figure out how we can quickly move. We can't afford private. We can't afford to live WOTP. I'd homeschool - and my child would be fine with that - but DC NEEDs time with peers and socialization. Am I the only parent sick to their stomach right now?

This was me about a year ago (except our charter was virtual a year ago, of course) - all the same concerns, and the same financial restraints. Once I removed my "we have to stay in the District" restraint, it was easy. We moved to Montgomery County. Love the new elementary school. Could afford a bigger house. No more concerns about learning models, middle school, high school. No more watching our charter figure it all out on the fly without the financial support or administrative power of a large central system. It's a tremendous relief. I NEVER EVER thought we'd move out of DC and into the suburbs. We are so happy. Caveat - we are both still working remotely and neither has experienced our new commute to work downtown - that may wipe some of the smile off my face. But not entirely, plus we both expect to have a lot more flexibility and WFH whenever our offices reopen.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I agree that charters DGAF about parents, and only seem vaguely accountable to their boards (if the board actually cares), to whom is DCPS accountable? The mayor? It doesn't seem like they responded to parents any better than charters.

Mayor, City Council, news media. Better than literally nothing.

Anonymous wrote:As a UMC charter parent, I'm starting to feel like our charter does NOT listen to UMC parents AT ALL but instead focuses on the majority of the student population...which is NOT UMC. I don't approve of the mitigation strategies our charter rolled out but I'm apparently in a minority, and viewed as the privileged white parent who finds fault with everything and anything.

Majority of parents seem just fine that kids are back and in-person. Parents aren't raising any concerns over the fact that lunch is inside or that desks are touching with no distancing whatsoever.

I'm currently trying to figure out how we can quickly move. We can't afford private. We can't afford to live WOTP. I'd homeschool - and my child would be fine with that - but DC NEEDs time with peers and socialization. Am I the only parent sick to their stomach right now?

Anonymous wrote:While I agree that charters DGAF about parents, and only seem vaguely accountable to their boards (if the board actually cares), to whom is DCPS accountable? The mayor? It doesn't seem like they responded to parents any better than charters.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the start of the school year and I'm overjoyed at sending my kids to their neighborhood school after a terrible pandemic year and a half. If you are considering putting your kids into EL Haynes Elementary I would tell you not to do it. The school really dropped the ball during the pandemic and has an ineffectual parent association that is essentially a public relations tool for the school. Parents have zero input and were left powerless during the pandemic. Parent teacher conferences disappeared. Teachers bailed. It was a disaster. During the early days of the pandemic, during school hours, I found my kid's teacher at the grocery store buying wine.

If you are looking for a school with a strong sense of community, I would not send my child to Haynes.

I wish more schools were judged not just on teacher abilities (very important) but also how involved are the parents, and how well the school encourages and promotes accountability. So many charter schools have zero accountability.

This is the story of every public school in DC during the pandemic. They all failed miserably.

If you look back through the depressing pandemic threads last year, you will see plenty of us who learned the hard way that charters can do whatever the f they want including not reopen. So yes OP this is an issue through the whole sector. At least DCPS had a central authority to lay down the law which didn’t exactly work, but, somehow it’s doubly painful to realize no one has the parents back at charters. They can all afford to lose you and lottery in someone else. They easily prioritize teacher feelings over parents because of this. Or their own feelings (paranoid admins). DCPS failed too but charters were overall much worse IMO.

Again, see how many kids left charters for dcps this year instead of the usual vice versa.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the start of the school year and I'm overjoyed at sending my kids to their neighborhood school after a terrible pandemic year and a half. If you are considering putting your kids into EL Haynes Elementary I would tell you not to do it. The school really dropped the ball during the pandemic and has an ineffectual parent association that is essentially a public relations tool for the school. Parents have zero input and were left powerless during the pandemic. Parent teacher conferences disappeared. Teachers bailed. It was a disaster. During the early days of the pandemic, during school hours, I found my kid's teacher at the grocery store buying wine.

If you are looking for a school with a strong sense of community, I would not send my child to Haynes.

I wish more schools were judged not just on teacher abilities (very important) but also how involved are the parents, and how well the school encourages and promotes accountability. So many charter schools have zero accountability.

This is the story of every public school in DC during the pandemic. They all failed miserably.

If you look back through the depressing pandemic threads last year, you will see plenty of us who learned the hard way that charters can do whatever the f they want including not reopen. So yes OP this is an issue through the whole sector. At least DCPS had a central authority to lay down the law which didn’t exactly work, but, somehow it’s doubly painful to realize no one has the parents back at charters. They can all afford to lose you and lottery in someone else. They easily prioritize teacher feelings over parents because of this. Or their own feelings (paranoid admins). DCPS failed too but charters were overall much worse IMO.

Again, see how many kids left charters for dcps this year instead of the usual vice versa.